there is considerable debate about this, but some people (me included) think that a full hard drive is one of the things that cause the HD-Tivo to reboot and generally misbehave...so filling-up your hard drive with a ton of shows just to know how much space you have might be a price you're not willing to pay...

there is considerable debate about this, but some people (me included) think that a full hard drive is one of the things that cause the HD-Tivo to reboot and generally misbehave...so filling-up your hard drive with a ton of shows just to know how much space you have might be a price you're not willing to pay...

just keep that in mind...

Click to expand...

ok, now i'm REALLY confused.

this is the way i've been thinking all along, i don't let the drive get at, or near, capacity.

this is the way i've been thinking all along, i don't let the drive get at, or near, capacity.

Click to expand...

sorry to be the source of confusion...you asked if there's a way to know how much drive space is left...the poster that answered you gave you the correct answer (to turn on suggestion and see how much stuff piles up on the drive)...

I just wanted to point out that this "trick" MAY come at a cost since it seems that a full drive has a higher tendency to have problems (another reason is keeping very old recordings)...

I want to make sure that you understand that this is an opinion, not a fact and that some people might disagree with that opinion...

I'm just trying to make sure you have all the information...Once your unit starts rebooting and losing recordings and generally acting up, you tend to be very sensitive to anything that might upset it...if all you want is to know how much drive space you have, it is my opinion that the risk you are taking does not outweigh the benefit...

sorry to be the source of confusion...you asked if there's a way to know how much drive space is left...the poster that answered you gave you the correct answer (to turn on suggestion and see how much stuff piles up on the drive)...

I just wanted to point out that this "trick" MAY come at a cost since it seems that a full drive has a higher tendency to have problems (another reason is keeping very old recordings)...

I want to make sure that you understand that this is an opinion, not a fact and that some people might disagree with that opinion...

I'm just trying to make sure you have all the information...Once your unit starts rebooting and losing recordings and generally acting up, you tend to be very sensitive to anything that might upset it...if all you want is to know how much drive space you have, it is my opinion that the risk you are taking does not outweigh the benefit...

Click to expand...

i should have been clear, i understood both concepts, one filling the drive with suggestions to determine available space and the other basically staying away from loading up the drive.

the confusion comes from deciding which way to go.

i think i'll play it safe and stick to what's been working so far, no more than approximately 24 hours of HD content.

I share your concerns for full hard drive issues. So far, I have been lucky in that area with both of my HD TiVo's. I bought one the second month after they were released and the second one last October.

It's too bad that we won't see a new generation of the DirecTV HD DVR with TiVo because I think they could have solved most of the issues that are well known today.

I guess the series 3 SA HD TiVo will benefit from the HR10-250 experience, and/or the Comcast boxes running TiVo software.

let me know if we should move my post to another thread, but this seems
like the best general info spot for HDTiVo questions. anyway, here are
my question(s) :

1) what's the story on getting a used HR10-250 activated by D* ?

with the current lease situation, I'd rather own the hardware instead of being
tied to them owning it. I've heard from some people that you can run into
trouble getting a new receiver activated by D* and from others that it's largely
a function of the person you get on the phone and or your rap with them and
you can get them activated w/o too much trouble.

so is there a (within reason) sure-fire way to get a used receiver activated ?

2) will the HR10-250 integrate the OTA signal into it's guide and whatnot
even if you're not getting the HD package from D* ?

I'm not really all that interested in the HD content that D* offers currently
as the channel line-up is relatively limited & most of the stuff I'd like to
see in HD should be available OTA to me. so I'm thinking that if it will work,
I'll just let the D* HD package drop off after whatever introductory period
I get from them (tho I guess this might not be an issue if I don't get the
HR10-250 thru D* as they'll have no reason to sweeten the lease price with
all sorts of extras) is over and run with SD content from D* and OTA HD stuff.

so, will the HR10-250 & the OS of the receiver let me work it that way ?

down the road I'll either dump D* and go with (shudder) Comcast when/if
they have a robust TiVo implementation, but for now with the single HD
set I plan to have & the likely programming that I'm interested in watching
in HD being available OTA*, worrying about the MPEG4 HD stream & hardware
to work with it isn't really a priority for me.

Ben

*relative to OTA programming for me area (SE Michigan) I think I should
be in good shape as I'm pretty close to all the broadcast locations, but
I'll have to check that with the various OTA-signal strength-specific pages
and whatnot. if I'm in some sort of dead zone most of the above will be
academic as I want to be able to get my locals OTA....

with the current lease situation, I'd rather own the hardware instead of being
tied to them owning it.
so is there a (within reason) sure-fire way to get a used receiver activated ?

2) will the HR10-250 integrate the OTA signal into it's guide and whatnot
even if you're not getting the HD package from D* ?

Click to expand...

welcome to the forum!

question 1: I'm not aware of any issue...you call D* and ask for a new access card. They send it to you, and you use it to activate your unit. For ANY dealings with D*, if a CSR won't help, just hang up and call again...but this is a straight forward deal, no CSR will deny you a new card...

question 2: Yes. As long as your antenna picks up the channel, the HD-Tivo will integrate it into the guide...if ABC is channel 7, for example, the guide will show channel 7 (which would be SD OTA) and channel 7-1 (which would be HD OTA)...your local ABC channel might have even more subchannels for weather, local traffic, etc. Those will show as 7-2 and 7-3...so you have no worries there.

cool, I suspected that I was getting alarmist info on not being able
to get an access card for a used receiver. I'll have to start watching
eBay to see what the going rate is for them. might have to check
with other forums which have been mentioned here as having
classifieds as well, tho I've had pretty good luck with eBay in
general.

I guess the only question now is what sort of retain-me-as-a-
subscriber leverage I'll have with D* to be able to get freebies
if I'm not buying the HD box from them.

then again I'm not all that interested in the HD content they
have anyway - my rationale against getting all worked up about
HD has always been that I don't actively _watch_ many shows on
TV, rather have them running in the background while I do stuff
online or read a magazine or whatever. if I actually start just staring
at the majesty of the HD content I'm going to seriously cut into the
time I waste doing all that other stuff I'm mostly interested in
getting things set up so I can watch the NBA playoffs in HD this year.

If I have an existing 3-LNB oval dish will I need to do anything
special to get the current MPEG2 HD D* content into the house ?
I happen to only have 3 of the 4 lines off the dish active due to
how the wires were stuffed when the initial install was done, but
I can get around that I run another wire if needed.

I wonder what the HR10-250 will do if one doesn't have the
box active with D* at all ? would be neat if it would work as
a basically stand-alone HD DVR, but that seems unlikely as it
wouldn't have a D* guide to integrate the OTA content with.

now I just have to go lurk on avsforums and figure out if my
initial thought that the Sony KDF-E42A10 will work for my
needs is correct....

Please forgive the somewhat newbie question,to receive sd signal i will need to leave the s-video cable hooked up along with the component cable for HD?

Click to expand...

Well, you CAN do that.. and then switch TV inputs based on whether you are watching SD or HD. I used to do that, but then I got tired of that route so I just set the HR10-250 to output either 480p or 1080i and watch only over the HDMI/DVI input on the tv. I just use the up arrow method to toggle between resolutions when viewing SD or HD. I mean, D* compression on most SD channels is so craptastic that upconverting it to 480p or 1080i doesn't really matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. YMMV.

you can also get a remote that does everything for you...the Harmony remotes -- among others -- will do all the switching for you (including switching receivers if you route your audio through one, for example) at the press of a button...

you can also get a remote that does everything for you...the Harmony remotes -- among others -- will do all the switching for you (including switching receivers if you route your audio through one, for example) at the press of a button...

Click to expand...

That's what I do. Universal remotes (I have an MX-500) with macros are great!

there is considerable debate about this, but some people (me included) think that a full hard drive is one of the things that cause the HD-Tivo to reboot and generally misbehave...so filling-up your hard drive with a ton of shows just to know how much space you have might be a price you're not willing to pay...

just keep that in mind...

Click to expand...

I never keep shows. After I watch them I would delete them and my HD lasted 7 months and died. So I put my vote that it is the crappy Maxtor Drive that is in the unit. I have had so many Maxtors die in computer systems that I will never buy one again.

One thing I don't understand. Why if these drives are crap do the few companies that sell the replacement drives use the same drive? Wouldn't you think that after knowing that these drives suck that you would want to be better than DTV and use a better drive?

I never keep shows. After I watch them I would delete them and my HD lasted 7 months and died. So I put my vote that it is the crappy Maxtor Drive that is in the unit. I have had so many Maxtors die in computer systems that I will never buy one again.

One thing I don't understand. Why if these drives are crap do the few companies that sell the replacement drives use the same drive? Wouldn't you think that after knowing that these drives suck that you would want to be better than DTV and use a better drive?

Click to expand...

Actually, most of the HR10-250 units come with Western Digital drives, not Maxtor drives.

With that said, the 'superiority' of any of these manufacturer's drives: Samsung, Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate tends to be a religious issue more than anything else. Our experience has been that Samsungs and Seagates have been overall, more reliable than Western Digitals and Maxtors; they've all been good, however and no brand has been fundamentally superior. I do have to say that over time, I've developed a mistrust of the Western Digital drives, but I think the issue we ran into a few years ago with them was a quality control issue that has since been remedied.

You can base your opinions on your own experiences, of course; naturally, we've had the benefit of dealing with these drives, by the thousands, for this particular type of application - so we base ours on our own experiences - we have no gripes with Maxtor drives other than the questionable Marketing practice of claiming a "Quickview" drive to be superior for TiVo-usage than any other drive. The test of time has proven that this is not the case, not that this hasn't been obvious from the start. (note QV drives aren't inferior for TiVo-use, either).

What we have seen, from time to time, are factory WD drives in HR10-250 units show up as bad when we initially test them (even in brand new units) which seems to be more of a quality control issue (perhaps even mishandling by the plant assembling the units) more than anything else.

Hey, (couldn't find answer in search engine)
I'm ready to hook-up my outside tv & would like to run it off my HD-tivo (inside-unit) as a second outside-tv. What's best way to do this? I've got a component-out available but thought I remembered you can't have 2 outputs that'd work on this thing(I'm using dvi-out on primary tv) -is this right? I'd never use both inside & outside at the same time...any help would be appreciated...

I would like to send 720p out over HDMI for HDTV viewing and then when I watch the SD SciFi channel switch to component in on my projector... this will allow the reciever to upconvert the selected 480i output (use 4-way to change from 720p to 480i) through the recievers Faroudja chip with DCDI which I think will provide a "better" SD image than the one the HD-Tivo provides just leaving it set on 720p.............